Rhein-Waal-Maas Tour 2018 – A Tour in Two Parts

A tour in 2 parts (with me riding 2 different Velomobiles!)

Tour Part 1 – A short tour to test the new Quattrovelo.

Klaus and I had originally planned a week long tour to see the almond blossoms in Klaus’s old stomping ground near Mannheim but my initial difficulties with the Quattrovelo, plus a not very good weather forecast, encouraged us to reduce our plans a bit.

Instead we decided to start our week of holiday from work with a three day tour around our locality. At a total of 221km we have actually both done this distance in one day, rather than three, but with temperatures of minus 3 for the first day’s riding, plus very strong winds, it seemed sensible to take it very easily! Bike tours should be fun, after all.

Tour 1 Day 1: Rhein

The first day’s plan was to ride from home to Rees am Rhein via Xanten, so a cross-country route to the Rhein and then cycling alongside it before crossing the bridge to the north side and overnighting in Rees.

This was my first multi-day tour with the Quattrovelo and it was interesting to see how this new Velomobile behaves in the cold weather and on longer tours. As you can see from my reports, it wasn’t entirely successful.

Tour Part 2 – Returning to the Maas in a Milan

After a two day break at home (whilst it was rather rainy) we set off on tour again, but this time I was using my Milan, Millie.

Having had many issues with the Quattrovelo, including pain in my good arm from getting in and out regularly, I decided it would be wise to use Millie the Milan instead as I knew this would be easier for me (although of course with some other drawbacks). As the weather forecast was dry it seemed worth a go! This time we decided to ride to Maastricht and then back in two stages, a total of just over 200km in three days.